About Jason Thibeault

Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

I have opinions. So do you. You want to share them with me. I would like to do likewise. Please don't expect a platform for proselytizing that will go unchecked and unchallenged, though. Contact me via the clicky thingies under my banner.

The commenting rules are simple: don't piss me off. This rule has worked for me for a decade; I have never found a need for any other rule, because any other rules leads to rules-lawyering. Just remember -- this is my property, not yours.

What’s the big deal though? It’s a picture of the killer in a club or something, holding a Labatt Blue. Surely even serial killers and snuff film makers who send dismembered body parts to political parties need to wind down too, after a long hard day with the bonesaw!

I’d covered this sicko when news broke, and I’m happy to report that Magnotta was caught after fleeing to Berlin and will not fight extradition back to Canada. Normally I’d be careful to say “alleged” killer, but the evidence is pretty iron-clad, and he’s admitted he “can’t stop killing”, so… yeah.

The victim whose body parts got sent to the Liberals and Conservatives was Jun Lin, a Chinese engineering student. The kid apparently had a promising career ahead of him before Magnotta made him famous. Bloody shame.

But seriously, who drinks Labatt anyway? It’s trying to be a less-offensive Coors Light or something, and failing miserably.

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About the author

Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

I have opinions. So do you. You want to share them with me. I would like to do likewise. Please don't expect a platform for proselytizing that will go unchecked and unchallenged, though. Contact me via the clicky thingies under my banner.

The commenting rules are simple: don't piss me off. This rule has worked for me for a decade; I have never found a need for any other rule, because any other rules leads to rules-lawyering. Just remember -- this is my property, not yours.

If companies were smart, they’d be proactive and ask the media to cover their logos should any such incidents occur *where the criminal is already known*. (If a criminal needs to be identified, logos might help catch the person.) TV channels already do this when airing feeds from other channels, they blur out other networks’ logos and superimpose their own. How hard would that be to do?

The hypocrisy of Labatts is all the more appalling when you consider how companies like that one will plaster their logo everywhere, on posters, in ads on bathroom doors, coasters in bars, t-shirts, hats, etc. First they want their logos seen, now they don’t. Come on, it’s not as if drinking Labatt beer is going to turn you into a spree killer or serial killer.

It’s not the thought that drinking Labatt Blue will turn a person into a serial killer, it’s the possibility that some customers may feel that Labatt is endorsing Magnotta and actually supports his crime. That being said, it’s a poor move, because now even more people will have seen the picture.

I think some folks upthread are over-analyzing Labatt’s reaction. Beer-buying decisions are not made rationally (there’s no reason why they should be when the goal is something as subjective as “enjoy myself”), and are influenced by random positive and negative associations. And one of the associations I get when reminded of this crime is of the maggot-infested torso rotting in a suitcase — not an image I really want when selecting my suds! (Not that I’d be likely to choose Labatt’s Blue anyway….).

However, trying to sue over the pic is stupid — as noted, it just drew attention to it. Sucks to be Labatts, but they’d have done better to totally ignore it, and it would blow over.

“It’s trying to be a less-offensive Coors Light or something, and failing miserably.”

Well, no. I don’t know about eastern Canada, but Labatt Blue was available in western Canada for decades before the Prussian draft-dodger’s beer showed up. As ordinary yellow beer goes, Blue is as indifferent as the next one, in a vast sea of indifferent yellow beers. At least there was a time when there were many Labatt breweries, swill-works though they may have been, across the country, employing Canadians and using Canadian barley.

As for their potential new image problem, I’m sure they can fix that up with a disclaimer on their labels. Anyway, beer marketing is directed at 15 year olds, and they are notoriously unware of pretty much everything.

Labatt’s Grue, anyone? (an I use it in the original Scottish sense, not the gamer sense).

You could do worse that Labatt Blue, but why would you want to? “Slightly better than Budweiser” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement for a beer.

Don’t want to become a murderer and/or cannibal? Avoid anything made by Labatt. Better yet, make your own beer or support your local microbrewery. Oh, and don’t kill anyone, eat their flesh, or mail their body parts to political parties.

What’s the big deal though? It’s a picture of the killer in a club or something, holding a Labatt Blue. Surely even serial killers and snuff film makers who send dismembered body parts to political parties need to wind down too, after a long hard day with the bonesaw!

Jason, this flippant trivializing of the horror of murder, even if it’s intended to be read as sardonic, could be hurtful to people who have survived attempted murders or family members of people who have been murdered. I strongly suggest you change it, as someone with no sense of context and fragile ego security might react very badly upon reading it. In fact, I suggest you scrutinize anything you say or write for any possible interpretation that could be hurtful to someone, whether that hurt is a proportionate, informed response to your contextualized language or not, whether your statement is technically accurate or not. If it’s possible that someone could construe your statement as dehumanizing, marginalizing, or otherwise hurtful, I suggest you re-word your statement.

(For the sake of clarity, this is satire, though I’m reasonably certain some will think that Strawman Has a Point.)

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